Tom Wilson
4 October 2023
Some suggestions, not a definitive guide to the above!
Guidelines and best practices for writing clean, consistent, maintainable code. They include:
Coding standards are often described in Style Guides.
“Code is read much more often than it is written”
Guido van Rossum
Some of its syntax suggestions:
<- not = for variable assignment<- = and comparators like > < == etc" not ' for quoting textfunction, if, for, while:
{ should be last character on a line} should be first character on a lineA simple example:
Some of its requirements:
A simple example:
# Multiplies input by a multiiplier
def Multiply(inputVal,MultiplierVal=10):
return inputVal*MultiplierVal
def multiply(input_val, multiplier_val=10):
"""Multiplies an input by a multiplier.
Args:
input_val: The input value.
multiplier_val: The multiplier value.
Returns:
The product of the input value and the multiplier value.
"""
return input_val * muliplier_valThere is a separate PEP for docstrings see PEP 257
Code formatters
Code linters
Use these tools from the R Studio Addins menu once the packages are installed.
In R Studio any issues flagged by lintr are shown in a Markers tab:
Unfortunately R Studio does not have on save option for running formatters. See pre-commit hook if using Git.
After installing the packages with
pip or conda can apply formatting or linting checks using a terminal:
However, an easier way to use these tools is within an IDE such as VS Code, PyCharm.
VS Code has code formatter and linter extensions for Python.
Linting and formatting tools can be configured to run every time save.
.pre-commit-config.yaml file in the code repository.
Both R and Python have specific ways to document functions (and classes in Python).
""". See PEP 257.def function_name:For example:
print(my_function_name.__doc__)roxygen2::roxygenise() is used to generate the documentation .Rd files from the roxygen comments.Try to follow a style guide for your code.
For R, see Tidyverse Style Guide. Python has PEP 8.
Code formatters automatically reformat parts (but not all) of your code to match a style guide.
Code linters run checks on style, best practices, errors.
See Reproducible Analytical Pipelines (RAP). Useful:
Coding Standards for R and Python